


The Hum of Engines

by janetcarter



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: F/F, PTSD, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Character Death, Past Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 04:10:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16189790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janetcarter/pseuds/janetcarter
Summary: Lochley hadn't always been so comfortable in Downbelow.





	The Hum of Engines

**Author's Note:**

> While I was able to base many of Lochley's troubles on my own, I have no first-hand experience with the specific kinds of addictions she's faced. I've done my best, but please let me know if I've touched on anything insensitively.

She avoids it as much as she can at first.

But after more sleepless nights than usual, she realizes that the more she shies away from the crowded, smoky hallways of Downbelow, the more its shadows stalk her every step. They've gotten bolder recently, nicking her ankles and tracing her wrists. If she didn't confront them herself, they'd drag her there soon.

She ventures there at 0300 hours, civilian clothing in the place of uniform and every step weighing as much as the station itself. There's something naïve about marching through every sector but Brown on a daily basis. Every shiny badge and bright face is a façade hiding the place no one chooses to roam. Chills prick every inch of her skin as she passes the threshold, beyond which more than her own past awaits.

To put it simply, she couldn't have imagined that the station could foster such miserable conditions, but she doesn't have to imagine the conditions themselves. She lived them, once. She knew all too well the pangs of her stomach eating itself when alcohol wasn’t enough, the vulnerability of broken windows and doorless frames, the uncertainty of if she’d wake up the next morning... Hell, she'd only rejected the release of death in those days because she couldn’t leave Zoe behind.

She leans against a wall to combat the fogginess sifting through her mind. Lurkers limp by her, hunched over. Some cough, some weep, others wear faces so blank they could've been masks if not for the patchy stains. The rest may as well have been corpses, with invisible roaches crawling over their pale skin like they had never been human. The same sights replicate the more she roams, like an echo in a cave system whose entrance has been lost.

It's too late to save Zoe, but it isn't too late to save someone else.

-

In her very, very limited free time, she volunteers at the Downbelow clinic. Between patients, Franklin questions her motivations: Why help out  _here_  when she could be handling bureaucracy on the pristine levels, the lives of Lurkers left forgotten?

She could have said she wanted to be more than a name to the people of Downbelow or that it was a way to familiarize every inch of the station she commanded. She could have said any number of things really, all of them true, but instead she adjusts her blue medical gloves, latex turning into place.

“It felt wrong not to.” 

He nods and smiles and they get back to work, but as the end of their day approaches he knows her explanation can’t be all. She treats the Lurkers with more humanity than with which they often treat each other. And earlier, as she sterilized tools with her back turned to him, her shaky breaths rattled against his ears. And just now, when he calls for the sharp, focused commander to fetch him a patient file, she looks as though she's been lost in a momentary haze.

As soon as Lochley hears her name through the fog, she quickly blames the lapse on Corwin calling her down to C'n'C at 0300 hours. She reads off the file and, before Franklin could lecture her on sleep habits, her link beeps. For once, it was a weight off her chest to be needed elsewhere.

It takes an admittedly long time before she returns to the clinic, but in the few more visits over the months, she and Stephen exchange small stories from their mirrored lives. They reminisce not about the instability of burnt-out hotels or cargo vessels exploring the stars, but about the instability of military dad upbringings. Lochley fails to mention her own father’s alcoholism, but when the topic of Lurker addiction rates comes up, there’s an indication between the two of them, an unspoken solidarity, that they’re no strangers to its relentless clutches themselves. 

They never speak past the surfaces of their wounds, but those knowing glances serve as a reminder as to why they’re both here: It already hurts to be human. The least they can do is make it hurt just slightly less for anyone they still can–for anyone who still has that chance.

-

Tonight, when Lochley pulls the covers over herself, her mind is quieter than when she first arrived on the station. Her trauma had fallen in sync with the hum of engines, always present, integrating into her daily routine. It had become a new normal, until she spent a flicker of a moment outside of its lull and realized how far her definition of silence had strayed. However, there would never be a solution as simple as rereading the dictionary.

She still expects Zoe to appear in her sleep, unsure if they’re dreams or nightmares until it’s too late. She still expects Zoe’s whisper calling her name at the worst times, never fading until she turns away. She still expects every thought to be tied to the girl whose fingers are still tangled into hers, souls still knotted together through frayed threads and words unsaid. But, while she'd accepted this routine long ago, she's now conscious to its toll.

There is no life without Zoe, but without Zoe there’s still life. Every time she rejects a sparkly glass of deep red wine, every time confiscated drugs sit on her desk untouched, every time things get too hard and her old impulses dip their claws into her track-mark scarred veins–she remembers Zoe. She remembers the Lurkers. She remembers Lizzie, because Lizzie got the second chance Zoe didn’t.

And it would be wrong of her not to use it. 


End file.
